NCP is with Cong, will fight polls together: Pawar

Nationalist Congress Party chief and union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Thursday that his party supports the Congress and will fight the next year’s Lok Sabha elections together.

Pawar told reporters on the sidelines of a function in Virar that his party attended the Left-sponsored convention of regional parties in New Delhi yesterday because like-minded parties had come together to keep communal forces at the bay.

"But this does not mean that we are parting our ways with UPA or Congress," he added.The convention was seen as an attempt to cobble up a non-Congress and non-BJP Third Front but none of the parties committed to its formation yet because a similar attempt before 2009 polls had failed.

NCP leader DP Tripathi, who attended the conclave had justified the party’s presence, saying just because the NCP was part of the government did not mean that it could not take a stand against communalism.